T-Mobile to end smartphone subsidies next year

If you want to get an inexpensive smartphone from T-Mobile, you’d better do it fast. FierceWireless reports that T-Mobile will formally kill off its smartphone subsidies in 2013 and will replace them with a new system where customers “pay an upfront fee for their devices and then pay the balance of the device in affordable monthly installments.” According to FierceWireless, T-Mobile CEO John Legere told Deutsche Telekom’s annual investor conference on Thursday that “we think there is a huge room for a carrier to change in a way that the larger players will choose to or will not be able to respond to.” Legere said that T-Mobile wouldn’t be adversely affected by ending its device subsidies since the carrier would still offer customers “fair and simple pricing” with “low out-of-pocket expenses.”